ASU launches Technopolis

October 23, 2003

By Flinn Foundation

Arizona State University has launched Technopolis, a program to increase life-sciences- and technology-based entrepreneurial activity in the Valley. The new program follows on the heels ASU’s Arizona Technology Enterprises, created this summer to address the special issues related to technology transfer of university employees’ innovations.

Technopolis is modeled after the CONNECT program in San Diego, widely credited with helping that city develop its successful biosciences enterprise. It will connect entrepreneurs to customers and investors, while also teaching them the vital business and grant-writing skills they will need to close the deal.

“I can see there is a lot of synergism that is going to take place,” Roc Arnett, president of the East Valley Partnership, told the East Valley Tribune. “And with someone as solid and as exciting, motivated and directed as ASU, it’s going to be phenomenal. There are entrepreneurs out there that are just waiting for the opportunity, guys that have ideas, guys that have had inventions in the medical or high-tech area . . . that with just a little bit of work, those guys are going to come running out of the bushes.”

The first program to be offered is Launch Pad, an eight-week course to guide entrepreneurs in developing effective business plan presentations. ASU Technopolis will also offer six-week introductory sessions covering basic start-up and management concepts for first-time entrepreneurs, and as a series of workshops focusing on how to obtain tech-related federal small business grants.